The photos: my Blue Moon Geisha-yarn shawl held up to Stephanie, sock style.Â Or, at least, it’s there in my drafts.Â Hmm.Â Anyway.Â Stephanie looking for her pattern as I put my knitting bag down; I’m wearing the Michelle pattern from my book, done in Sea Silk in the Teal colorway, which knitty-noddy.com had custom dyed by Handmaiden after I requested it. Laura in Alameda with The Sock. Stephanie arriving.

Okay, here goes. The bookstore had everybody waiting in line outside for hours, but I told them, I don’t do outside–I’m an indoor cat. Right now, my lupus goes after my eyes when I’m in sunlight. Oh, well, no problem. They let me wait inside, which was very nice of them, and all was fine.

Stephanie greeted me with a smile when she came in, and then the biggest hug when it got to my turn in line. And then several more hugs before she let me go. It was so good to get to see her again–a huge shout-out to Jasmin, who drove (three hours up, two hours back), and Nancy, who rounded out the carpool. And Patricia and later Faye, who met us there.

I knew it was Stephanie’s booksigning, not mine, but I also knew how excited she’d be: she had cheered me on during the process. So I showed her my author’s advance copy of my book, and she was exulting, YOU DID IT!!! She flipped through it, asking if her shawl was in there; it is. The Monterey one there, I’d knitted that pattern up for her; she hadn’t been allowed the time in all her booktouring to go see the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so I’d knitted the Aquarium into a shawl and given it to her. I showed her the original jellyfish-and-seaweed one in the book. She was exclaiming, Oh, cool! Look at this!

At one point a little before that, while she was signing and I was waiting for the pre-boarders to finish up, (she always lets the moms with little ones and those with physical needs go first), my friend Laura in Alameda, who’d been part of the standing-room crowd, found me. Laura is a friend that, four years ago, I knitted her a cashmere lace scarf and gave it to her at Stitches: her reaction was to crow, “I get to say I knew you when!” I thought that was so funny! But she believed in me that I would write that book someday that I wanted to, long before I completely believed it would ever happen. We’d been trying to meet up again ever since, with one failure after another. I had no idea she was coming yesterday. So here Laura suddenly appeared out of the crowd, coming over as I stood up in wonderment to greet her, and we threw our arms around each other in thrilled exclamations. Stephanie watched with the very happiest smile on her face: our happiness was her happiness. I adore both of them. And then when Laura was having her book signed, Stephanie recognized her name, and exclaimed, “You’re Laura in Alameda? I know you!”

I got to see Rosemary of designsbyromi.com, the person who, when I said I wished I had a shawl pin that looked like a treble clef, immediately created one. Guess who got the first one? And then she insisted on holding my book while I snapped her picture. Wait, this was Stephanie’s booksigning, not mine!

Hi, Laura! Most of the shawls in the book used fingering weight yarn, but for whatever it’s worth, I took one of the larger patterns and did it in Alpaca With a Twist’s Fino yarn, 875 yards/100 g laceweight alpaca/silk, and it came out beautifully. A very different, more ethereal look to it, and a whole lot snugger of a fit, but even a much-larger-than-me friend was able to have it fit reasonably well around her shoulders. So those patterns are pretty adaptable.